Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Soon to be released is a film about experiences of people who have been laid off from their jobs. The implication in the title is that one can make "lemonade" from the "lemon" dealt in the lay off. I'm a recent partaker of this initially frightening, but sweet nectar---having received the gift of time to paint again and to learn new painting techniques, to research woodworking techniques and tools, to search out vintage and funky-lightful furniture pieces to recondition, restore, enliven and re-sell, to babysit greyhounds for their adoring parents, to plant and nurture a vegetable garden and research all the ways one can cook beets, artichokes and more, to pick fruit from my pear and apple trees for the first time in the three years since moving into this house and to bake and eat delicious pies from them, to mow my own lawn and care for my flowers, to bake a loaf of healthy bread weekly, to spend quality time with family and friends, to read the books I want to read, to enjoy my morning coffee while sitting on the front porch . . . If you've been laid off from your job, tell us about your "lemonade". :o)

Friday, August 7, 2009

The end of May I drove to the San Francisco Bay Area for a two-day workshop in basic beginning encaustic painting taught by Hylla Evans at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California w.kala.org/mission.html . I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop---it was precisely what I had hoped it would be to get me started painting in encaustic, and eliminating my fear of the torch as a fusing device. Hylla provided needed information on safety, materials, techniques and stressed the use of archival elements in artwork. I took ten 12"x12" plywood boards with me and worked on all ten during the two days. I've included snap shots of two of the pieces here. Hylla makes and sells encaustic materials in Sonoma and has a website:

Last Friday morning (July 31) I saw a post on the SLC craigslist in the "artists" section for a two-day workshop for Encaustics for Textile and Fiber artists starting the next day (August 1). Daniella Woolf conducted the workshop at Spiro Arts in Park City http://www.spiroarts.org/ . I managed to sign up to take Saturday's session, in spite of short notice. As close as Park City is to Salt Lake City, I had never heard of Spiro. It's a great little facility housed in a restored old building over a silver mine. There is 2200 square feet of studio work space and Spiro offers art workshops and residencies as well as a space for lecture series through the U. of Utah. I felt a bit out of my element as a painter, using fabric, but learned more techniques of working in other materials with encaustic. It was fun meeting Daniella (who lives in Santa Cruz, CA and Whidbey Island, WA). http://www.daniellawoolf.com/ and http://encausticopolis.blogspot.com/ She introduced me to Jeff Juhlin from Salt Lake City who is an artist working beautifully in encaustic, as well. I had a great visit with Jeff in his studio this afternoon and came back with lots of notes on studio set up and materials and where to get them.

Prior to starting to explore encaustic painting techniques, I have been using melted wax as a frisket for layering acrylic paint in some of my work. Melted wax does not mix well with acrylic paint. Oil paint and/or dry pigment are compatible to use for coloring the wax in encaustic painting. The use of melted wax in my acrylic paintings has been purely as a frisket or masking device as I add subsequent layers of acrylic paint. When I am ready, I peel away the hardened wax to reveal the image I'm after. The photo on the left illustrates the point in the painting process in which the last layer of acrylic paint has dried and I am about to remove all layers of hardened wax to reveal desired arrangement of layers of color in the final painting.

The completed painting is titled Calligraffiti One and is shown here directely on the left and in the previous post "Working with acrylic paint and wax as frisket".

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"As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." Herman Melville, In Mazatlan, March 28 - April 16, 1844, Sociedad Historica Mazatleca, Mexico